[darawk]

The term 'credit score' is sufficiently general to encompass literally all methods of comparing borrowers. You could certainly take issue with some specifics of how particular agencies calculate it, but the idea that there is some "alternative way of comparing borrowers" then I'd invite you to invent another formula for determining loan parameters, that does not boil down to a scalar value.

Loans involve the calculation of parameters. You can either choose those implicitly through personal knowledge, or explicitly through a scalar metric (credit score). There is no viable third option, and the first option is just a bad version of the second, in the end.

[scarab92]

Yep.

It's worth pointing out that credit scores actually are actually just the P(^default) expressed on an integer rather than fractional scale.

There's also multiple credit scores, there are the scores computed by credit bureaus which look at your P(default) against all lenders, but many lenders also compute their own internal credit scores using models trained against their own customer base (and possibly also taking into account additional data that they hold about you).